How many are "One of Us"?

Lounge
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Was just wondering about this? If you add up all the Basic, Member, Regular, and Leader users on the board you get 1236, and one of those is Discobot. There’s no way Amal could work full time with such a small customer base, so clearly there’s alot of “Us” out there somewhere.

Plus DT isn’t the only source for tech.

I doubt there’s any way to know even close to an accurate count, but what’s your take. How many of “Us” are there? Assuming that being one of “Us” requires at least an RFID device of some type, or greater (elective) upgrade to the standard issue bio matter container that life set you up with.

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Well not everyone on the forum has any implants…

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So you can’t even use the forum numbers for that…

I would expect the best you could do without actually studying it would be to have access to sales figures.

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Not gonna help. It’d only show DT’s customers. I’m talking ALL of us.

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:wink: I never said only DT sales data. I would expect you would need to contact ALL the main manufacturers and that would not cover the home brew crowd. But it would help.

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I’d be shocked if just the number of people getting implanted at Defcon didn’t rival the total number of people on the forums

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We implant enthusiasts are just the tip of the iceberg. The bulk of his business is with crypto government agencies and aliens - some of whose unwilling customers end up here from time to time :slight_smile:

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I’d say between 8k and 50k DIY cyborgs

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I would have started with

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I don’t mean to rain on everybody’s parade here, but this is starting to grind my gear a bit: we really should stop calling ourselves “cyborgs”, because none of us meet the criterion - which is that the non-human bits interact with the human bits and/or vice-versa in some form or other.

Really, carrying implants under one’s skin is just like having the implant in one’s pocket, only one doesn’t need a pocket. There is exactly zero interaction between the chip and you. No cyborg there…

We’re just slightly augmented humans. An amputee wearing a prosthesis is much more of a cyborg than anyone with a subdermal implant, because there’s a functional link between the two. In my opinion, calling ourselves cyborgs is like kids with cap guns calling themselves cowboys: it’s just wishful thinking and it makes us look a bit silly and immature, or attention-grabbing.

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Does that make you a Robot? :robot:

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Magnetic implants meet that definition.

Also by the current definitions I just looked up

physical abilities are extended beyond normal human limitations by mechanical elements built into the body.

The mechanical part seems to be more supportive of your argument.

Admittedly language is an ever evolving thing, I don’t think anyone thinks there a bloody terminator but the name seems to have stuck, do have a better term for people who stick microcontrollers under there skin?

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Sorry yes, you’re correct. I was thinking of people wearing RFID and NFC transponders.

Magnet implant wearers do indeed interact with their implants, and get an additional sense out of them. They are cyborgs in my book.

I was under the impression that the newer term “grinder” - which has a different meaning of people hacking their own body outside of the medical establishment - was more appropriate. Cyborg is older, and describes a functional state of humanity that few of us have achieved.

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I have heard that term a fair few times, I don’t really like it personally as it is such an over used word. If I told somone I am a grinder they would struggle to find out what I mean. The top definitions I found where someone who

  • A person or thing that grinds.
  • A grinder is a slang term for a person who works in the investment industry and makes only small amounts of money at a time on small investments, over and over again.
  • A gamer doing boring repetitive tasks

:man_shrugging: I actually failed to find a definition of it without mentioning body modification or similar terms

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Ah well, there is a fourth definition that you seem to be unaware of :slight_smile:

Anyway, the meaning of words shift over time, and that’s natural in a living language. “Hacker” for instance is one of them: it used to mean something very specific, and now it’s completely overused and carries a nefarious intention that it didn’t use to be associated with.

So I’m okay with “grinder” or “cyborg” meaning anything anybody wants. It’s just that if you think “cyborg” covers people with itty bitty subdermal transponders in their hands, the rest of the world doesn’t understand it that way and thinks you’re bragging, is my point.

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Fair point. I don’t disagree that a RFID tag fails to meet the current definitions I found.

I am aware of that connotation :rofl:, interestingly that also failed to come up when searching for “grinder person” and other similar terms.

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Shhhh! My cover might be blown! Now pardon me while I get back to changing the fusion beam on my ship. That is all! :gun: :alien:

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Amal calls it a cyborg kit also.

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Much easier for normal people to understand Cyborg, than Grinder. I’d really have to explain Grinder if I claimed it. In excrutiating detail. Lay people have a greater inherent understanding of Cyborg.

I AM bragging.
IE: “Hey baby, you ever done it with a Cyborg? You want to? :wink:”

I had a real interesting talk with a guy once who had a powered hearing aid, with some kind of surgical install. Basically we set down and broke augmentation into levels.

Type 1A External devices, Removable, Unpowered. Ex. Glasses.
Type 1B External devices, Removable, Powered. Ex, Hearing aids.

Type 2A Internal devices, Medically necessary / corrective. Unpowered. Ex. Artificial eye lenses.
Type 2B Internal devices, Medically necessary / corrective. Powered. Ex. Pacemaker.

Type 3A Internal devices, Augmentation, Unpowered. Ex Rfid Chips.
Type 3B Internal devices, Augmentation, Powered. Ex. XGlo

Type 4A Internal devices, Interactive, Unpowered. Ex. Sensing Magnets.
Type 4B Internal devices, Interactive, Powered. Ex. North Star Project. (maybe, not familiar with it)

Type 5A Internal devices, Neural linked, Unpowered. Ex. Think brain flash drive maybe.
Type 5B Internal devices, Neural linked, Powered. Ex. Anything that just barely misses the Singularity.

The idea being you’d classify any device by it’s number, and a Cyborg by his/her/it’s Highest number.

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Kinda like this scale. So my glasses, having bluetooth and boneconduction speakers, would be 1B, but I’m finally in 3A now that I have a couple of chips too. I can get behind this haha.

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Fun to think about, but only useful in conversation with me, you, readers of this thread, and one Ex-Marine Security Guard with dark humor in Wichita, Ks.

Just for fun.
Glasses, 1A
Surgical Clamp / Spring 2A
NeXT 3A

ODaily is a Type 3A Cyborg.

Too me, “Cyborg” starts being applicable at Type 3A and above.